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Saturday, August 20, 2011

I found this on the blog of a Reformed fellow which I have recently enjoyed reading. Among other reasons, the author of this blog is clever for nabbing the URL "dogmatics.wordpress.com." Nice.

The quotation:

“If it were a matter of harmonizing [faith and reason], then we wouldn’t keep a single article of faith. My dear fellow! If God is almighty, how can one make sense out of the fact that he doesn’t punish evil, but rather lets it happen? Either he mustn’t be able to punish and resist every evil, or he mustn’t want to do it. If he doesn’t want to punish it, then surely he’s a rogue; but if he cannot punish it, then he’s not almighty as God ought to be. And now make sense out of this: the highest Wisdom behaves as if it were ignorance, and the highest Might as if it were impotent. You won’t find even a Turk who could make sense out of that! And this is why wise people…come to the logical conclusion that there is no God at all.”

So must we all. Remember:
We all flourish for a time,
And in such timebound thriving
Is all Man's transience shown.

So do not fear the once-dying,
And do not flee the elemental

Burning of the mundane tangle:

Across this earthly valley hangs

The loom on which our tapestry

Is stretched, the tapestry of all flesh.

Bent metallic souls we are, we frame

This too too solid cloth whose warp hangs

Lichen-like, unbeautiful,

Pulled by gravity towards

Earth's infernal core.

Our waning tensile strength

Portends collapse; so, too, the

Red hot, singeing shuttle

Whose darting course unknits

Mortal canopies.

Between, among, throughout the motes
Of purgatorial flame and smoke,
Descry the Weaver's hands which ply
Pig-iron souls and tattered strands.
Persist, abide in Job-like faith.
Recall, too, the sometimes-theologian,
Who -- young in name if not in age --
Turned an accidental holy phrase:
"It's better to burn out," he said,
"Than fade away."